Pop. 175,623. In the Reg. Mun. of Waterloo on the Grand Rand Hwys 7, 8, & 86,justN ofHwy 401, adjacent to the City of Waterloo, 18 km SW of Guelph.

Kitchener and Waterloo could be one city but for their different names, and they are often referred to as 'K - W.'

Early settlers, in the late 1790s, called the place Sand Hills because of sand dunes at the site and later, Mount Pleasant. A few years after Mennonite Benjamin Eby settled in 1807, the community was renamed Ebytown.

Eby became Canada's fIrst Mennonite bishop, and for 40 years was minister of Canada's first Mennonite church. By 1830 immigrants were coming from Germany, and Ebytown was renamed Berlin in 1841 in honour of their homeland.

In 1916, when the First World War was being fought and anti-German sentiment ran high in Canada, the name was changed to Kitchener after Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener of Khartoum, a British war hero who drowned at sea that year.

Joseph Schneider is considered by many to have been the founder of Kitchener. He arrived in 1807 and the second house he built here, in 1816, is the city's oldest building and home of the Joseph Schneider Haus Museum .

It was John Metz Schneider (no direct relation to Joseph) who started the meat-packing business. J. M., as he was known, had emigrated directly from Germany.

He was injured at Emil Vogelsang's button factory and in order to support his family while he recuperated he used his mother's recipe to make pork sausages which he sold door to door.

This was the humble beginning of Schneider Foods of Kitchener with the 'Dutch Girl' logo on its products which by 1925 had a modem plant and more than 100 employees.

William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950) was born in Kitchener and began a public service career as a specialist in labour relations. He was prime minister of Canada 1921-1926, 1926-1930, and 1935-1948.

King spent his teenage years in a 10 room house in Kitchener called Woodside, now a museum in Woodside National Historic Park maintained by Parks Canada.